Healthcare dominates discussion at Amash’s Belding town hall

BELDING, Mich. -- Rep. Justin Amash is making the rounds throughout West Michigan again, hosting town hall meetings and hearing from citizens.

On Monday, he met with people at Belding High School. While he covered a variety of issues at the town hall, healthcare seemed to dominate the back and forth conversation between him and residents.

"I think we should start over," Amash said about healthcare legislation. "That's what I've said the whole time. There are ways we could put a bill together, but we've seen that's been very difficult to pull of in a way that is both effective and popular in the House and Senate."

Amash says he believes healthcare should be handled by individual states, not the federal government.

Some of his constituents disagreed.

"I don't know why the people who originated the healthcare plan aren't being called on to say 'Hey, how can you help us fix this?'" said resident Kathy Vidal, who attended the town hall. "Again, I think back to we're not finding the middle ground."

FOX 17 also spoke with Amash about his thoughts on President Donald Trump's performance. After serving six months in Washington alongside our new Executive Branch, it appears he's not ready to give the administration a grade.

"I've had my criticism of President Trump. I think that we still need to give him a chance," Amash said. "He's got this new chief of staff who's come in and hopefully he can start to turn things around. But I've been concerned over the way things have been handled over the past several months and even before he was put into office, and I hope things get turned around."

Education also arose as a concern among the crowd. There were several teachers present who said they're concerned about Amash's stance to cut the Department of Education. He explained his position, saying he thinks Michigan citizens would be better served by our own current state departmet of education and reducing the bureaucracy.

Amash has another town hall scheduled tomorrow at East Grand Rapids High School at 5:30 p.m.